You don’t have to buy into the paranormal to be amused by the new Fox sitcom Ghosted.
Ghosted materializes at 8:30 p.m. ET Sunday, another live-action insert for Fox’s Sunday night comedy bloc. It’s lightweight, goofy and a good bit of fun.
Sitcom vets Adam Scott (top) and Craig Robinson (top) star as, respectively, Max Jennifer and Leroy Wright, a classic odd couple tasked with thwarting a ghost plot to destroy Los Angeles and maybe the human race.
It feels more like tongue-in-cheek sci-fi than ghostbusting, to be honest, and while it satirizes high-level secret agency shows, it doesn’t require its characters to act like oblivious idiots.
Both Max and Leroy take their work seriously and if you accept the premise that their quarry exists, they behave very logically. That is to say, the humor is a bit more subtle than on many sitcoms, all things being relative, and that concept is as rare as it is gratifying.
It helps that Max and Leroy arrive with backstories that lend themselves to ongoing drama.
Max was a professor at Stanford who was fired after insisting that his wife had been abducted by aliens. Academic freedom notwithstanding, Stanford decided he was just too nuts.
He also wrote a book on the “multiverse,” which held that there are parallel universes in which multiple versions of all of us lead different lives. All props to Fringe for having mined that idea on Fox a few years back.
Anyhow, Max got a new gig stocking shelves in a bookstore.
Leroy was an LAPD cop and detective, the best missing-persons guy on the whole force, until he chased a criminal into a building without backup. His partner followed him and was killed.
Now Leroy is a security guard at a mall.
As our story begins, Max and Leroy are drugged and abducted by The Bureau Underground, a highly secret government agency that investigates the paranormal.
When they come to, they meet the Bureau team: neurotic computer geek Barry (Adeel Akhtar), tech-savvy Annie (Amber Stevens West), and the boss, Ava Lafrey (Ally Walker).
Ava offers them a deal in return for their short-term help with an immediate problem, and this de facto tryout goes well enough that they get offered permanent gigs with the Bureau.
The real-life lesson of Ghosted, kids, is that when you’re looking for a job, just get your foot in the door and you never know what opportunities might arise.
Robinson and Scott are both first-rate at the kind of deadpan these roles require, and Walker leads a fine supporting cast.
Ghosted has a familiar sitcom look and style. The material and the cast make it feel fresh. While new sitcoms these days face strong headwinds, this one should stand more than a ghost of a chance.